GOP ditches recruits to save incumbents

Darren White and Erik Paulsen were prized Republican recruits, House candidates poised to be the new face of the GOP on Capitol Hill.

But as the two head into the homestretch of their campaigns, GOP operatives say they’ll probably have to win — or lose — on their own. The money national Republicans earmarked for White in New Mexico and for Paulsen in Minnesota will likely go instead to protect GOP incumbents who once looked like locks for reelection.

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GOP Reps. John B. Shadegg of Arizona, Lee Terry of Nebraska, Henry Brown Jr. of South Carolina and Dan Lungren of California are all fighting for their political lives, a reversal of fortunes that has caught even the most astute campaign observers by surprise.

It’s an omen and an echo. Just a few weeks before voters went to the polls in 2006, veteran Republicans Gil Gutknecht in Minnesota, Jim Leach in Iowa and Jim Ryun in Kansas suddenly found themselves in tough reelection fights. By the time the party saw what was happening, it was already too late. Unknown challengers booted the lawmakers from office in a landslide election that gave Democrats control of both the House and the Senate.

If 2008 looks like 2006, a new wave of veteran Republicans will be out on the streets, and the colleagues they leave behind could find themselves with the smallest minority since the post-Watergate era.

“If you’re a Republican in a less-than-outstanding district, you want to have taken a poll in the last two weeks no matter who you’re running against,” said David Wasserman, an analyst on House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

“The DCCC has made advertising decisions that have forced Republicans’ hands,” he continued, mentioning Terry’s seat in Nebraska and one held by conservative Rep. Mark Souder in Indiana. “Republicans, in turn, need to spend in these districts. And $500,000 to the [National Republican Congressional Committee] is a whole lot more meaningful than $500,000 to the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee].”

Despite some early suggestions that John McCain would help a few Republicans in marginal districts, the presidential election is playing to the Democrats’ favor in races across the country. Barack Obama’s current momentum is strong enough that even some Republicans in red states, such as Nebraska, have tied themselves to the Democrats this fall.

In Nebraska, where Obama hired a state director to help him turn out the vote in and around Omaha, Terry just sent voters a piece of mail with a testimonial from a woman who plans to split her vote between the Republican congressman and the Democratic presidential contender — a sure sign that the GOP brand is lagging along with the economy and McCain’s own prospects for the White House.

“Even if you’re an incumbent Republican member of Congress, you still need to run against Congress,” said GOP pollster Rob Autry of Public Opinion Strategies. “This is not an environment where the warm-and-fuzzy positives work. People are upset, they want to know you get it, they want to know you’re frustrated like them.”

In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Monday, 90 percent of Americans said the country is headed in the wrong direction. Only 8 percent said the country is on the right track.

In California, Republican operatives have noticed some troubling trends.

Two years ago, Lungren — who is completing his seventh term in Congress — beat physician and Vietnam War veteran Bill Durston by 21 points. But the economy has taken its toll, and Lungren’s district has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country. In a newly released Democratic poll, Lungren leads Durston by just 3 percentage points.

Former GOP consultant Allan Hoffenblum said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and other California Republicans, including Reps. David Dreier and Brian Bilbray, are also at risk.

“The Republican base is not sufficient by itself to elect a Republican in those [California] districts; they still need the independent vote,” Hoffenblum said. “In the past decade, they have been reliably voting Republican for president and for Congress. … There are a lot of angry and scared voters out there. This is not your traditional environment.”

In South Carolina, Brown is facing Democrat Linda Ketner, the free-spending heiress to the Food Lion fortune. So far, Ketner has outspent Brown, and even Republican operatives acknowledge the race is competitive in the coastal district in which President Bush garnered 61 percent of the vote in 2004.

“With her buying a lot of TV ads, it raises the specter that she can run a competitive race,” said Jay Ragley, executive director of the state’s Republican Party.